Efforts made by Singapore government to nurture the nation’s entrepreneurship scene have finally rippled down to the private sector.
With the extension of the National Research Foundation’s Technology Incubator Scheme (NRF-TIS), eight new incubator-funds have emerged last year. Among them is TNF Ventures (TNFV), which held an official launch last Friday.
The fund is founded by several veterans, consisting of a good mix of entrepreneurs, senior corporate executives and venture capitalists, mostly in the IT industry. Read more
The KDDI Open Innovation Fund, a 5 billion Yen (US$63M) corporate venture capital fund from Japan, is seeking to invest in promising mobile startups in the seed and growth stage. Read more
Sahil Lavingia, a 20-year-old entrepreneur, shares some tips on attracting investors. He was with the founding team of Pinterest before leaving to build his own startup Gumroad, which makes buying and selling online much easier. One of the things he did was to build relationships with investors before even building his startup. He did it through writing on his blog, and engaging investors via social media. Age is nothing but a number.
This article was republished with permission from the author’s blog.
Andreessen Horowitz recently revealed that its investment of US$250K in Instagram became $78 million. Thats a multiple of 312. Investing in early stage ventures is indeed very rewarding yet inherently risky. It thrives on multiple high risk bets out of which one or more would achieve high rewards.
But that certainly does not mean putting blind bets on anything that comes your way. Those who believe in “Spray and Pray” kind of investing are often losers in the long term.
Most VCs through their experience would have developed some sort of an internal braincloud (mental) checklist which gets ticked during the pitching sessions. Relying on mental checklists again is risky. Some or more of those check points might get sidelined if the idea falls into one of the soft spots of the more influential team members.
So how can venture capital funds systematically mitigate undue risks?
Here is a list of risks inherent in Venture investing along with practical risk mitigation strategies and if needed a ‘Jugaad’. Jugaad is a colloquial Indian term that means a creative idea, or a quick workaround to get through commercial, logistic or law issues. Read more
Edgar Hardless has replaced Yvonne Kwek as the new CEO of SingTel Innov8, the venture capital subsidiary of SingTel, Singapore’s largest telecomms company.
Edgar was formerly the vice-president of strategic investments for Singtel, overseeing the company’s M&A activities.
Yvonne had been Innov8′s CEO since its inception in 2010. She will be moving on to retirement.
Innov8 manages a fund size of S$200M (US$158M), investing in technologies in the fields of network capabilities, next generation devices, digital content services, and customer service enhancers.
Innov8 provides ventures with access to SingTel Group’s mobile customer base in both developed and emerging markets in 25 countries and enterprise customers through its network of 36 offices in 19 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the USA.
In addition, the SingTel Group’s assets, including subject matter experts and infrastructure are available to any venture it invests in.
Startup incubator Kickstart has launched in the Philippines last month, part of a recent spate of new accelerators that have set up shop in the country. It is now calling for submissions for startups who want to receive an investment.
Christian Besler, the incubator’s vice-president and community engagement head, bills Kickstart as “the only Incubator in the Philippines with existing strong ties to the local grassroot community.”
Explaining this, he says that Kickstart was part of the team that organized last year’s StartupWeekend Manila, the first such event in the country. Read more
Lofty will be folded into Roomorama’s existing platform, with their B2B sales and management team transferred over but not their technical side. Read more
Having made its run in Singapore and Shanghai, the annual Asian Business Angel Forum is now heading to Kuala Lumpur. Asia’s premier angel gathering and conference for emerging and growing businesses, ABAF 2012 will see “30 top business leaders, revolutionary angel investors, policy making venture capitalists and proven start up specialists from across the world coming together on one stage to dialogue, address and train 500 of Asia’s top entrepreneurs and angel investors”. Read more
To qualify, applicants must be passionate about building a technology company, regardless of whether they have started their enterprise.
The program supports a wide range of technology industries: Digital media, software, biotech, cleantech, ecommerce, advertising, consumer electronics, and more.Read more
The eight incubators are: Get2Volume, Golden Gate Venture Investments, Incuvest, Jungle Ventures, Red Dot Ventures, The Biofactory, The Network Fund (TNF), and WaveMaker Labs. Full details in the press release.
Under TIS, the NRF will co-fund up to 85 percent of total investment per company, or up to S$500k (US$400k), with the rest topped up by the venture firm. Only Singapore-based startups need apply.
The incubators can choose to buy out NRF’s equity share within three years of investment, at a price of 1.1 times capital in the first two years, and 1.15 times capital in year three.
Born in 2006, the NRF dictates the country’s direction for R&D by developing national policies and planning strategies for innovation, enterprise, and research. Read more
Efforts made by Singapore government to nurture the nation’s entrepreneurship scene have finally rippled down to the private sector.
Having made 
